I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch.
Gilda Radner
US actress & comedienne (1946 - 1989)Saturday, by Chicago-based artist Sabrina Raff, is a sound based artwork that participants experience through a glove. With walkie talkies, CB radios, and other forms of consumer spy technology, Raaf harvested communication leaks of private conversations held by the community of Humboldt Park. She mixed communications between gang members, late night sex talk, women singing out their windows, the ice cream carts, etc. to create a portrait in sounds that literally drips from users' fingertips in the Saturday artwork.
To hear the audio, participants have to press their fingertips to their forehead and they can hear the sound without the use of their ears. The glove is outfitted with "bone transducers" which translate sound into vibration patterns which resonate through bone.
Sabrina Raff
The work of Lucy Orta, one of my favorite artists, is shown at the On Conceptual Clothing exhibition in Tokyo. Ms. Orta's art melds clothing with social activism.
In the 90's, she began fashioning Refuge Wear to answer situations of human distress. These temporary shelters, labeled Body Architecture are portable habitat catering for minimum personal comfort and mobility for the inhabitant. For example, Refuge Wear provided vital mobility and waterproof shelter for the Kurd refugee population; temporary protection and shelter for natural disasters such as the Kobe earthquake; mobile sleeping bags for the homeless, etc. I particularly like Modular Architecture, portable dwellings made up of units that can be combined to make a number of different forms. A version of the structures allow four men and women to travel separately during the day, each wrapped in a waterproof, insulated body-suit fitted with myriad pockets to store water, food and medicine. At night, these people meet in a designated area and, after removing their body-suits, they zip them all together to make a warm four-person tent. The next day, they unzip the tent and climb into their bodysuits to continue their traveling.
Refuge Wear
Lucy Dunne is working on the Massage Shirts project which looks at "the relationship between personality and desire to conceal or display technology." The shirt contains the same technology, a set of small motors which provide a vibrating shoulder and back massage, but with different degrees of visual integration into the garment:
Also of interest is Philips Research Feel Good Kimono. Woven with conductive threads that de-stress the wearer. A conductive embroidered spine at the back, disperses an electrostatic charge via the fibers of the garment to create a tingling sensation. Inside the pocket, a remote device with settings allows to regulate the level of relaxation. Biometric sensors monitor the degree of relaxation and adjust the level of sensory stimulation accordingly.
Sonic City, developed by a the Viktoria Institute and RE-form in Sweden, enables people to compose music in real time by walking through the city.
The system retrieves information about the environment and user action, and maps it to the audio processing of urban sounds, resulting in music heard through headphones.
Wearing a sensor-equipped jacket, the person can create a personal soundscape co-produced by physical movement, local activity, and urban ambiance. Encounters, events, architecture, (mis)behaviors all become means of interacting with or 'playing the city'.
"playing the city"
